{"id":1315,"date":"2010-02-24T01:27:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T01:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2010-12-20T13:33:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T20:33:44","slug":"slavery-vikings-and-charlemagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1315","title":{"rendered":"Slavery, Vikings, and Charlemagne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a little bit of synchronicity in my historical reading. I am not sure if it “proves” anything, other than the fact that it is difficult to sort people into “good guys” and “bad guys.”<\/p>\n

1. At the library, I recently picked up The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies<\/a>\"\"<\/em>, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wanted to look for some material on agriculture\u2014the adoption of the three-field system<\/a>, wheeled plows<\/a>, etc.\u2014but I was sucked into a chapter entitled, “Strong Rulers\u2014Weak Economy? Rome, the Carolingians and the Archaeology of Slavery in the First Millennium AD” by a German scholar, Joachim Henning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are two figures that I have lifted from his work:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

As I used to tell my students when we talked about American religion and slavery, the Roman empire back in Jesus’ time ran on slavery the way that our civilization runs on petroleum. (And Jesus had nothing to say about it.)<\/p>\n

Slavery requires chains and shackles, lest the slaves wander away. Figure 2.1 is a map of archaeological sites (farms, villas, plantations) containing shackles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The second figure graphs shackle finds over time in Gaul (France, roughly). They rise during the Roman times, then plunge during the Merovingian dynasty<\/a>, during the so-called Dark Ages.<\/p>\n

But then shackle finds\u2014and hence presumably slavery\u2014rise during the Carologian dynasty<\/a>. Its founder, Charles Martel<\/a> (ca. 688-741), stopped the Islamic expansion into Europe. His grandson Charlemagne<\/a> (Charles the Great) is a huge figure in medieval western European history, but his actions included the slaughter of more than 4,000 Saxons who resisted conversion to Christianity.<\/p>\n

There was a European slave trade in Pagan, polytheistic Roman times\u2014and it continued into Christian times, up through the 1400s, at least\u2014and then it was time for Columbus!<\/p>\n

2. Meanwhile, a British historian suggests that Viking raids on Europe might have been payback for Charlemagne’s forced-conversion program<\/a>. (Via the Covenant of the Goddess NPIO blog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But before you annoint the Vikings as the pro-Pagan “good guys,” remember that they were in the slave trade too<\/a>, particularly in what is now Ireland and Russia.<\/p>\n

As some people say about their relationships on Facebook, “It’s complicated.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a little bit of synchronicity in my historical reading. I am not sure if it “proves” anything, other than the fact that it is difficult to sort people into “good guys” and “bad guys.” 1. At the library, I recently picked up The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,100,50,134,56,53],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-france","tag-history","tag-ireland","tag-norse","tag-rome","tag-russia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-ld","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1282,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1282","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":0},"title":"It’s Cool to be Medieval","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At least according to critic Philip Hensher, writing in a British newspaper, who says that medieval is the new black:It\u2019s never easy to account for fashion, but perhaps some real factors have contributed to the reading matter of 2010. This last year has seen a world-wide fear of a destructive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1706,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1706","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":1},"title":"Medieval Castle, Medieval Methods","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The BBC describes an ongoing project in France to build a 13th-century castle using local materials and the tools and techniques of that era. I am always fascinated by what people learn by building old things in old ways, be they ships (like Tim Severin's \"Brendan boat\") or buildings or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"13th-century-style castle under construction in France","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/48215000\/jpg\/_48215173_48215174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5001","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":2},"title":"Critiquing “Double Belief” in Russian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider this a follow-up to yesterday's post on Russian dream rituals, which linked to an article whose author totally accepted the idea of spiritual practices with\u00a0 \"very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\" I had not realized this, but Routledge published a book critiquing the idea of \"double belief\"\u00a0 (dvoeverie) three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3999","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":3},"title":"Ring-Dancing Monkeys and Black Death Rubbish","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-sounding story that the nursery rhyme \"Ring around the Rosies\" has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s. It does not. As any good English plague survivor********** could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druids\"","block_context":{"text":"Druids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11657,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11657","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":4},"title":"Northern Wolves: Garb and Shiny Boots in a Polish Pagan Order","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In his article \"Wolves among the Sheep: Looking Beyond the Aesthetics of Polish National Socialism,\" Polish cultural anthropologist Mariusz Filip examines the symbolic meanings of tattoos, re-created medieval garb, and modern paramilitary uniforms in the Polish Pagan group Zakon Zadrugi \u201cPolnocny Wilk,\" (the Order of Zadruga \"Northern Wolf\"). The artiicle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fashion\"","block_context":{"text":"fashion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fashion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Tattooed man holding medieval sword","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10622,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10622","url_meta":{"origin":1315,"position":5},"title":"Quick Review: “The Pagan King”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"My \"Pagan-ish\" blog tag seems mostly to go to Latvian materials, and here is another one, The Pagan King. Set in the 13th century, when the Baltic peoples were to be the last Europeans Christianized at sword's point, it is the story of a young man named king of Semigallia,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Medieval Pagan Latvians","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2213,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}